Pronunciation question -- quixotic

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I've heard the word quixotic used with relative frequency where I'm from (N. California), and it was not until I first read the word and understood the context of its origin that I realized how strange the pronounciation really is.

I am a linguist.

The fact of the matter is that sometimes word-orthographies are borrowed and sometimes word-pronounciations are borrowed.

An example of the latter is 'yacht,' from something like 'jachtshift' or 'hunting vessel.'

An example of the former is Quixote + ic = quixotic -- kwiksahtik. That anglicization for you - "Tell us how its spelled and we'll damn well say it how we like." (after we take out your silly letters that we ain't got and add a few derivational and inflectional morphemes, of course.)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I agree with much of what you say. But we have to adapt to unpleasant and irrational linguistic shifts all the time. We all have to start saying "it's all good" or using "societal" in place of "social" or whatever at some point, however stupid and ugly it is.

That's not true. People can refuse to accept linguistic shifts.

Nobody's going to accept "nucular" anytime soon (at least not before we get a southern Democrat president-- which is why I suspect "not soon.").

There is no "should be pronounced" beyond how words actually are pronounced. I agree that it sucks but it's true.

It's not true. Every word has one or more correct pronunciations. All that varies is the degree to which mispronunciations are accepted, until they become "correct."

But there's certainly a long timeframe where that pronunciation is demonstrably incorrect ("nucular," again).

Obviously there are some words that are salvageable. Quixotic is more salvageable than nucular because quixotic is a simple case of mispronunciation; nucular is a linguistic shift where the ear of the speaker cannot hear the difference. People who say "kee-hot-ic" have the ear to distinguish between the two pronunciations; they are making a deliberate (and incorrect) pronunciation choice.

And they can be corrected.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Webster pronounces it "Quick-sot-ic," rhyming with exotic.

http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=quixotic&x=19&y=10

 

[Lasher Dragon]

<~~Makes the "deliberate and incorrect" pronunciation choice and loving it.



KeeHOEtic

 

[Desdichado]

I do have a serious question. How would a spanish speaker decribe someone as being "like Quixote"?
Is there a single word in spanish that covers this thought, or would it be expressed in a phrase?

You would most likely say that "él es un Quixote" actually. You could also call something a quixotada or a quixotismo, and you could probably create an adjective quixotado, although it doesn't sound completely natural. If you wanted to be really silly, you could probably also create the fake verb quixotear, but it would sound as silly to say "¡Estoy quixoteando!" as it would in English to say "I'm quixoteing!"

But frankly, you'd most likely just say "como Quixote": like Quixote, as a phrase. There really isn't any way to create a word exactly like quixotic in Spanish, ironically.

 

[reveal]

From http://www.yourdictionary.com/wotd/wotd.pl?date=2004-06-01

Etymology: A commonization (conversion of a proper noun to a common one) from the English pronunciation of Quixote [kwik-sot] "a naive visionary" after Don Quixote [kee-'ho-tee], hero of the Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. (Don Quixote is the eponym of "quixotic" and Michele Kayen, a Civil Engineer from Denver, is recipient of today's gratitude for suggesting it.)

 

[Lasher Dragon]

KWICKsotick just seems too, I dunno, white.

hehehe

 

[Desdichado]

I agree with much of what you say. But we have to adapt to unpleasant and irrational linguistic shifts all the time. We all have to start saying "it's all good" or using "societal" in place of "social" or whatever at some point, however stupid and ugly it is.

Huh? Why in the world would we all have to do that?

There is no "should be pronounced" beyond how words actually are pronounced. I agree that it sucks but it's true.

Over time (and I mean, a long time), yes that's true. At any given moment it most certainly is not.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

Kee-ho-tik or kwik-sah-tik can both be corrected by those who care to, but an argument can generally be made for the pronounciation being corrected, too.

Look at "angst" or "forte." Both are commonly "mispronounced." Or are they? Just because the common pronounciation is not the same in English as it is in the source language doesn't mean that the borrowing language is "wrong." It's just different. That's a part of the process of borrowing.

Speakers can fight linguistic change, just as you seem to advocate, Wulf, but we don't have to. When a language stops undergoing change, it's generally regarded as 'dead.'

Really, in the end, I think we each tend to argue that most people should speak the way we ourselves do. If everyone expressed themselves just as I do, the world might be a boring place, but at least I'd understand most everything everybody else said or wrote.

There is such a thing as hyper-correction, too: like when we insist that folks pronounce the all of the "R"s in the word "February," or the "L" in "talk." This sort of thing is not unprecedented. In fact, its one of the means of "linguistic shift," as you call it, worth mentioning.

Between Greek, Latin, French, and Spanish alone, English prpbably has at least as many borrowed words as it does native Germanic ones, and I don't really expect most English speakers to keep up with the different grammatical, morphological, and phonological rules that accompany the words we use. Most folks don't even know the etymologies of the words they use, much less understand the pronounciation rules of all of the languages from which English borrows lexical items. Further, I would argue that if someone spoke English using all of the pronounciations appropriate the the source languages for all borrowed words, his of her speech would be nigh indecipherable to nearly all other English speakers.

 

[Desdichado]

The problem with trying to enforce foreign phonology on derived English words is firstly that you say it wrong anyway. "kee ho tay" is not how the word is pronounced in Spanish. It's a closer approximation, but it's still wrong.

Maybe someday my quixotic dream of everybody writing every language with the IPA will come true, but until then, kee ho tay is as close as you can render it so that English speakers who don't know or understand modern Spanish pronunciation can approximate it.

Secondly, "quixotic" is not a Spanish word. There is no way to pronounce it in Spanish, at all. If you use the method in which every derived word is a weird chimaera of English and some other language, it leads to a vast array of idiosyncratic mangled pronunciations as various speakers pronounce it according to however much of the original language they happen to know. Long, long ago it was consequently concluded that the easiest way to handle it was to just totally Anglicize derived words with standard pronunciations.

The only problem being that everyone who knows the word quixotic is very likely to know the source of the word, Quixote, and have a reasonable idea of how to pronounce it. What you say is pretty good as a general standpoint, but -- if anything -- the root Quixote is much better known than the derivative English words, like quixotic, quixotism, quixotry, etc. making the pronunciation very odd indeed. This also applies to Arbiter of Worms' post; sure, that's true in general. But in the case of quixotic, the etymology is very transparent to even lay-folks who don't know the word etymology and don't care. In addition, the pronunciation varies irregularly and irrationally from the (proper) noun Quixote, which is probably a better-known word. As great as your argument is in general, I don't think it really applies to the word quixotic.

I think I've pretty much convinced myself that I don't care what the dictionary says after all; I prefer the pronunciation kee ho tic and if anyone tries to correct me, I've got my reasoning in my hip pocket.